'Motor Voter' Drawbacks

There are some major drawbacks to the "motor voter" plan that would require the Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles to register people to vote when they apply for driver's licenses. Noncitizens may be inadvertently registered to vote. And citizens who are uninterested and illinformed about candidates and ballot issues probably should not be automatically registered to vote.

Low voter turnout as a percentage of registered voters can be problematic in some elections. The town of Mansfield's charter specifies that when 15 percent of registered voters don't vote in a bonding referendum, the referendum question fails even if a majority of voters voted "yes." At least one bond referendum question in Mansfield has failed because of very low voter turnout, which could be attributed to UConn students who register to vote in Mansfield but are uninterested and uninformed about local issues and who may remain on Mansfield's registered voter list after they have moved away.